BlackBerry Widget SDK Beta Released! OS 5.0 Required & Coming Soon?

RIM has pulled yet another of their annoying 12:01 press releases announcing the release of the SDK for their new Widget system. The new widget SDK will let developers create widgets for OS 5.0 BlackBerrys and are kind of like web applications. This gives web developers access to BlackBerry API’s that used to be only accessible through Java apps.

The widgets use the BlackBerry browser and standards like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create a mini application kind of like Gmail’s interface. This could let developers make use of the push features on the BlackBerry to let widgets alert you about news in the background.

The API’s let developers access internal apps like the calendar or email applications or even letting you play media or edit files. In short it will be pretty cool! The widgets will also support Gears, SQLite and the new BlackBerry Widgets API. The widgets can then be installed OTA, through the App World, or pushed out through a BES.

Sadly it looks like even widgets will be subjected to the annoying code signing keys required of Java apps… On the other hand the wealth of documentation provided for this beta is AWESOME!

I’m new to BlackBerry development (I’m a novice .Net developer with zero experience with Java). This certainly sounds interesting, but does anyone know if the Widgets can use BES data connections to access internal servers?